This disclosure relates generally to the field of web portal performance.
A web portal, or portal page, may provide a user with an initial point of access to information on a network, presenting information from diverse sources to the user in a unified manner. A portal page may provide services including but not limited to a search engine, email, news, or stock prices, presenting information from different locations in a common context.
The portal page may offer these services through a number of applications, or portlets, that make up the overall portal page. However, a portal page with a large number of component portlets may consume a large amount of system resources and generate significant traffic on the network. This is tolerable if the overall load on the system is low; however, if the load on the system is high, a large number of portlets may overburden the system, while a reduction in portlets on the portal page may reduce the performance burden on the system.